Tonight, Xmas Eve, we will have a full moon, Mars will be at its brightest in years, and clear skies over most of the nation. But if you need more help finding Santa tonight, NORAD has teamed up with Google Maps to give you a real-time, Flash-based Santa tracking application.
If I get elf crap in my stocking again this year, I’m going pagan.
NORAD Santa Tracker [northpole.com] Read More

Normally this is the time for peace on earth and good will to all people. But not over at the blog belonging to Segala, a Dublin-based company offering “Web accessibility and Mobile Web standards compliance.” Its CEO Paul Walsh (who describes himself as an “Irish Opportunist” on his Twitter page) is a prominent networker in the London and Irish Internet scene, and an… Read More

Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night. From all of us at CG to all of you in TV-land, here’s to a great year gone by and a great year ahead. We couldn’t have done it without you. Now, let’s hear it for the CG team: Read More

Hate opening Photoshop, that resource hog, just to resize an image? Me, too! That’s why I use Picnik, an online photo editor that uses the magic of Web 2.0 to—get this—edit photos. It can grab photos from your Flickr, Facebook, Picassa, Photobucket and Webshots account, or edit photos you have on your computer. There’s a premium version, too, that, for $25 a year, gets… Read More

Business Week’s Sarah Lacy pens an interesting piece on Europe’s startup climate following her visit to Le Web 3 in Paris a couple of weeks ago. Although relatively fair-minded, it has the faint whiff of disdain. I can imagine her saying “Europe? Pah? Who’d want start there when you can do it all in Silicon Valley?!” And if her fawning interview with Kevin rose at… Read More

Looking to buy a new camera? Keep your wallet separated from your ass cheek by a thin layer of whatever material your pants are made out of until President’s Day, says a guy who wrote two photography books. That’s the part of the camera season (yes, there’s a camera season) when the new wave of digital imaging gadgets that everyone got a whiff of at CES start to kick it into… Read More

It may be a little late to be recommending things for Christmas, but if you find yourself with a couple of extra dollars come tomorrow and have been in the market for a decent sound system and you live in an apartment, then I’d recommend you check out the Onkyo HT-SR800. It’s one of those all-in-one home theater deals, only it doesn’t suck (according to some of the folks over… Read More

India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research is taking a cue from open source initiatives that you and I know so well and applying those same ideals to third world drug research in the hopes of developing cures for diseases "at a fraction of the costs incurred by multinationals to develop a new drug." Read More

It’s the usual suspects; if you read last year’s list, you won’t be surprised by many of the contenders. And although it’s said every year, I really think we’ll see a lot of these things in 2008. I’m guessing the Optimus Keyboard will see a limited release, XP SP3 will be released now that the Vista rush (such as it was) is over, and even Spore and the… Read More

Toshiba and Sharp were recently pressed their magic rings together proclaiming, "Wonder Twin powers, activate! Form of…a strategic LCD alliance wherein Toshiba buys LCD panels from Sharp and Sharp buys semiconductors from Toshiba!"
The actual meeting may very well have gone differently than that, but you get the idea. The partnership will allow the two companies to produce… Read More

As promised on Friday, today is the day to announce the winner of those Ultimate Ears Super.fi 4vi iPhone headphones. The contest was a reader response deal where the comment that tickled us the most over the weekend would win the earbuds.
After much deliberation, the CG staff has decided upon one comment for its humor and ballsyness. The winner is JJ, for this response to a woman looking… Read More

Let’s say Santa tomorrow brings you Lost on Blu-ray or maybe a Simpsons or Seinfeld boxset or two. By all means, enjoy your new gifts, but don’t forget that the men and women who wrote the stories for those shows—”writers”—are royally screwed over and see very little money as a result of their sale. Yes, the writers strike is still unresolved and even… Read More

The FBI of the USA is busy building the world’s largest photo database of people’s faces, fingerprints, and palm prints.
It’ll be used for crime fighting and terrorist wrangling but it can also be used as part of a plan "under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees’ fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees… Read More

Dave Winer goes into into an Apple store and asked them to replace his hard drive out of warranty. They sold him 80 GB for $160 and then told you that he couldn’t have his old drive back. And he’s upset.
Let it be said that while I don’t agree that Apple stores should “treat you different,” it is a pretty shitty policy. When you go to a mechanic they give you… Read More

Perhaps you woke up this morning and said to yourself, “You know what? I’d love to waste $100 on something I don’t need.” Lucky! This 3D lens cap from Loreo is said to “create” “3D” “images” when used in conjunction with a 3D viewer. A gimmick, in other words.
In its defense, it does work with pretty much every SLR on the market… Read More

This movie had better not make it to Blu-ray.
Want something that will warm the cockles of your heart like a class of benzene spiked egg nog? How about new Blu-ray disk types! LG released BD-RE and BD-R types for you and your’n this holiday season, just in time for the entire next-gen format war to implode under the weight of its own hype.
LG unveils new Blu-Ray discs Read More

Apparently this little lady found two Wiis and Guitar Hero III and is willing to part with these gems to get a new set of cans. Let’s let her tell you her story:
So I set out 3 weeks ago to find 20 Wii’s and sell them for $500-ish a piece like everyone else is doing to buy myself a Christmas gift, a new set of boobs. You see mine are used, as in milk factory used. We-I am… Read More

Spread some Christmas cheer today and tomorrow to all your online “friends.” Or, you can be a real, go-it-alone American and sign up for one of several new anti-social networks. It’s all the fun of real social networks like Facebook and MySpace, only with the faux, forced amity. Choose from the likes of Hatebookand Snubster and make things like “friend… Read More

IAC got serious about its Ask property this year, investing $100 million in the United States alone on a bizarre “Ask the Algorithm” campaign that even sunk to the depths of using the Unabomber as a marketing tool. Unfortunately for good taste there’s nothing like a bit controversy to draw attention to a service and Ask’s traffic was up this year, proving once again… Read More

Internet phone company Vonage settled a patent lawsuit brought against it by AT&T. AT&T claimed that Vonage infringed with its patents by using packet-based telephony products, which allow voice conversations to be carried over the Internet.
Since going public in 2006, Vonage was hit by multiple lawsuits by telephone service providers. It settled a suit with Sprint Nextel and another… Read More